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The Musculoskeletal Aspects of Asthma

Like most of you, I’ve been watching the Olympics and as I watched, I remembered a previous Summer Olympics and watching the start of the Women’s Marathon. I noticed something in the body language of one of the front runners and said to my friends, “That runner has asthma; look at her neck.” My friends chuckled and then the announcer talking about the runner I pointed out said that she suffered from asthma.

In my Applied Kinesiology practice, I see a number of patients with breathing problems. To a person they all have problems using their diaphragm muscle properly, they use small muscles higher up in the chest and shoulders creating a “barrel-shaped” chest. And many have problems w/ their intercostal muscles and the up of down movement of the ribs; their rib joints don’t move properly therefore not allowing the movement of the chest.

Tightness and/or weakness is also found in the Pectoralis major & minor, SCM, the Anterior & Middle Scalenes and the Serratus anterior as well as other accessory muscles, they tested to find out if they are inhibited or compensating.

With applied kinesiology, I can use golgi tendon and muscle spindle reflexes to re-set the muscles and use neuro-lymphatic & neuro-vascular points to flush toxics out of the muscles. I restest the inhibited/weak muscles to get a neural lock in the brain’s muscle center.

I use neuro-lymphatic & neuro- vascular pts to help lymph and blood flow to the diaphragm and also give the patient breathing exercises to strengthen the diaphragm.

I also stimulate acu-points for the lung meridian and it’s brother/sister pair- the large intestine meridian which may indicate that the patient needs probiotics.

The cervical & thoracic spine are checked for subluxations/somatic dysfunction as the nerves from these areas innervate the before mentioned muscles and the lung and are adjusted as needed. The articulations of the rib joints to both the vertebrae and the sternum are also important to check.

Working on all these aspects causes the bio-mechanics of the chest to work better and breathing is freed up.

Of course causes of both bronchial and lung and general inflammation need to be found and worked on via nutrition and lifestyle changes; but that is another blog.

And by the way, though they usually do not need it, I always warn my patients to no matter how well their breathing feels, to always carry an inhaler, just in case.

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